


I Hold On to Those Fraying Threads

by Artemis1000



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Complicated Relationships, Dark Side Rey, Dubious Morality, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Jedi Ben Solo, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-08 23:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13469082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: After killing her Master, Knight of Ren Rey followed reluctant Jedi Ben Solo to the Resistance. On the Millennium Falcon carrying the Resistance's last survivors, they are both strangers not quite fitting in. All they can do is try to hold on... and hope there is something real beneath Snoke's manipulations which is worth holding on to.





	I Hold On to Those Fraying Threads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



Ben breathed a sigh of relief as soon as the loud, angry Resistance voices faded behind him, leaving him all alone in a blessedly empty corridor.

After all the precious commodities the Millennium Falcon had smuggled in its life, privacy seemed to be the most precious of all these days.

There was a squawk from somewhere by his feet. When he looked down, he found a Porg indignantly pecking at his boot. He took a step aside and the Porg waddled forward to disappear in a hole in the wall, where it was greeted by the squawks of what sounded like a whole clutch of hungry porglets.

So much for having any place on this ship to yourself.

Ben buried his face in his hands and fought against the hysterical laughter that threatened to bubble up in him.

He slowly sank to the floor, pointedly ignoring the noises coming from the nest of Porgs or that his Dad was going to murder him when he learned that Ben hadn’t done a thing about the birds nesting on his beloved ship.

He had barely started absently plucking at his Jedi robes when footsteps made him halt again, head swiveling to catch sight of the woman whose tumultuous presence stood out starkly in the Force.

Rey still wore black clothes swathed around her body in the way of sand dwellers all over the galaxy, she still wore her hair tightly tied back to fit the stern, severe countenance that almost succeeded to make her look older than she was. Most pointedly, she still wore the red cross-guard lightsaber with which she had first fought Ben on Takodana and Starkiller Base, then the Praetorian Guard back to back with Ben after she had skewered her own Master on Ben’s lightsaber.

He smiled wryly to himself. If you summarized the happenings of the past few weeks they could strike you as almost comical except of course that nothing about the lost lives and worlds was funny.

“Come to watch me fail at being a Jedi Knight?” he grumbled, rubbing a hand over his face again.

Rey halted right in front of him, the scuffed tips of her boots nudging his outstretched legs. “You’re not failing at anything,” she remarked, as blunt as ever. “You’re hiding.”

He smiled wryly, head lolling back against the grimy plating of the corridor. Everything on the Falcon was still covered with a thin layer of Jakku filth. “I guess.”

Rey remained silent for long moments, just sizing him up with her piercing eyes that had seen as certainly right into his heart as his had seen into hers. “They distrust me.”

“They know you only as the enemy. Give them time. They’ll come around, they’re good people.”

The words felt hollow to Ben and worse, he could see his own doubt mirrored in Rey’s eyes. They both knew she was not trusted or welcomed, only tolerated on the word of General Organa’s Jedi son, who was himself seen with skepticism for not having taken a stand until right before Starkiller.

“I know you to be good,” Rey replied, “that’s why I’m here.” She squatted next to him, still scrutinizing Ben as if his face was the most interesting thing in the universe.

He reached for Rey’s hand, no longer just tentatively touching fingertips to fingertips, but grasping her hands with surety now and holding on firmly. This time it was no Force projection, it was all flesh and blood and wonderful reality and yet in the Force, Rey felt dimmer to him – no, not dimmer, she still shone as bright as something as light-and-dark-intertwined as her could, but it felt like his sight of her had been muted where before he had seen her more clearly than anything else.

Ben shook off those morose thoughts and squeezed Rey’s hand tightly. Their connection had been strong even with half a galaxy separating them, Ben seeking out his uncle in his exile on Ahch-to and Rey at her twisted Master’s side. Their bond had been strong enough to bridge impossible distances, it would not falter now.

 

He could still feel her, but even when they were in the same room, even when they were touching, it was like Rey was slipping away more from Ben with every passing day.

It had to be the height of cosmic irony at a time when they had never been closer – physically speaking, for no other reason than that everyone was unbearably close on the Millennium Falcon. It had never been built to house even half as many people as it sheltered now. If they didn’t soon find an old Rebel Alliance base secure and well-maintained enough to settle down, they would all end up at another’s throat.

That wasn’t to say that they were not already at another’s throat half the time. Rey’s presence sure didn’t help.

“Rey chose us!” Ben snapped as he had so often before. “She killed Snoke for us and didn’t take his place when she could have. She gave up everything to join the Resistance.”

It was a familiar argument, one Ben had grown used to having whenever he was in the same room with a group of Resistance survivors and Rey wasn’t with him. Sometimes they had these arguments when she was present, too.

Today he’d just wanted to have a cup of caf before finding himself a quiet spot for meditation when he had gotten pulled into another debate with the group gathered around the dejarik table. He didn’t even know the names of the men and women he was arguing with, which only showed how little _he_ belonged. He shook the thought off. This wasn’t the right time to mull over his own discomfort.

One of them stood up to face him; Ben vaguely remembered seeing him work on their ships before, a hangar tech. “But she didn’t do a thing until all our ships were picked off one by one, didn’t she?” he asked, accented by the murmurs and nods of his friends. “It was Admiral Holdo who saved us, Kira Ren didn’t do a thing.”

Ben opened his mouth to argue the point, but what was there to argue, really. Rey had taken too long to call back the First Order troops and thus prove her loyalties once and for all. She had once more been tempted by the powers the Dark Side promised her and other people had paid with their lives for her hesitation.

It had been Ben’s refusal to join her that had swayed her, but not until the Resistance had been on the verge of being wiped out. In the end, they would always choose the other’s side, not the Dark or the Light, yet in the end that hardly mattered between the escape pods being picked off one by one and Hux’s devastating attack on Crait.

“Ben can feel what she feels,” his mother spoke, her voice kind but firm and calming. He turned to her in surprise, he hadn’t even heard her come in. Leia Organa looked more saddened than disapproving by what she had stumbled upon yet again. Most of all, she looked tired. They all did. “They have a Force bond. If she sought to betray us, he would know.”

He stood there, rooted to the spot, his throat uncomfortably tight. Right. He would feel it. He would know. He had sensed her turmoil from Ahch-to. He had sensed her light. He just… He just had a staticky signal now, that was all.

With every second of his silence, the chagrined faces of the rebels around him turned more doubtful once again.

Ben took a deep breath and nodded firmly. “That’s right,” he said. His voice was far steadier than his nerves, Solos had always had a good sabacc face. “I can feel what she feels. I would know.”

He could only hope he would – all he sensed in Rey these days was suffocating doubt.

 

“That’s all nice and good, but let me remind you that base has been turned into a pirate nest. They won’t hand it over because we asked nicely.”

Ben looked towards Poe, who had returned grimmer than before from his survey mission.

“The base is perfect in every other way but it’s taken,” Finn added. “It’s a shame, too, we would be perfectly positioned near but just out of the way of three major hyperspace routes.”

The mood in the Falcon’s cockpit dropped as the command circle found their hopes dashed once more.

“There are too few of us left to risk our lives in a scuffle with space pirates,” Leia decided after a moment of silence. “We will keep searching. I know of other old rebel bases.”

“You won’t have to risk your fighters.”

They all looked towards Rey. She had lingered in the shadows, not considered a part of the council but still to be on hand to provide her insights into the First Order. She stepped forward now, her gait sharp and predatory as if she was stalking towards prey. Her narrowed eyes were on the portable holo-emitter portraying a map of the pirate nest, yet the rebels still shifted away as she passed them.

“Just give me Ben and I’ll clean it out for you. They won’t even know we are there.”

Her hand had dropped to her lightsaber but her eyes flickered from the flickering blue schematics to Ben. He could have sworn he caught uncertainty lurking in the  corners of her eyes, then he felt a flicker of her need for reassurance hum through the Force and reached for it, tried to _understand_ , but before he could grasp her presence she slipped through his fingers again and all that was left were her cold eyes.

While Ben had tried to hold on to Rey the crowded cockpit had erupted into a ruckus of voices all trying to be heard at once. They were almost enough to deafen him, certainly enough to make him wince and wish he could cringe away.

“Enough!” Leia snapped, every bit the General now. “I won’t have anyone shouting accusations at other members of the Resistance. And,” she looked to Rey, “I won’t sanction cold-blooded mass murder. Nor will I have my son take part in it.”

Rey’s chin lifted up stubbornly. “What’s the difference between murder and acceptable killing? Is it that some of yours must die first?”

Ben could almost see his mother’s resolve turn to steel. “I won’t discuss this. The pirate base is off limits. We continue our search.”

Anger showed on Rey’s face for a moment before she stormed out of the cockpit.

Ben stared helplessly after her. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him, everyone’s eyes. “She is… she meant well,” he said quietly, head ducked, hands hidden in the sleeves of his Jedi robe. “I need to find her.”

 

He found Rey stalking the cargo hold, which had been turned into a dormitory just like every other available space. Fortunately, it was empty right now; everyone was busy fixing the Falcon the best they could.

“Rey.”

She whirled around, her jaw clenched so tight Ben was certain it had to hurt. “They don’t want my help,” she ground out. “I don’t know what I’m even doing here.”

He couldn’t feel it anymore through their dying bond but Ben had seen enough of Rey’s heart to read between the lines the echoes of _they don’t want me_.

His own heart ached for her and he reached through the Force, reached through their bond… and found nothing but fraying, thin threads which barely connected them anymore. There was painfully little left beyond the normal connection between all living things within the Force. Maybe there was nothing beyond it at all and the rest was just wishful thinking and phantom pains.

He sighed and ran a hand over his face. If he were a better Jedi he would know all the right words to say but fact was, he wasn’t. If he’d been a better Jedi he should have been able to defeat Snoke without Rey’s help or at the very least convince his uncle that Snoke luring half his students onto the Dark Side was no reason to cut himself off from the galaxy and the Force itself. Instead, all he’d done was run in his own way, burying himself in his father’s smuggler life and burying the Jedi so deep it had taken a planet destroyer to dig it up again.

“I want you here.” His voice came out smaller, far more pleading than he’d intended. Ben nearly cringed at that, barely won the inner battle against it. If he showed any doubt, Rey would assume he was doubting her. They didn’t understand another anymore as they did before, now all there was left was…

He walked slowly towards her and stretched out his hand, palm up.

Rey still stood tall and tense, her body coiled for attack, or maybe rather for defense. With their bond fallen silent, Ben couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

“Please?”

She looked at his hand, her own clenched and unclenched at her side, but she didn’t reach out. “You feel it, too,” she whispered, and then harsh with anger, “you can feel it breaking apart!” She stepped towards him, ending right in his face, the length of her body pressed against his.

Ben’s heart plummeted. Of course he felt it, how could he not. It was easy enough to ignore that they couldn’t visit another anymore through the Force when they just had to walk down the corridor to see another in person, and yet there was no way he could deny that every time he reached for the Force Bond, he grasped a vast, intangible nothing where Rey should have been.

Yes, he could feel it – and they had both tried so hard to pretend that nothing was changing, that _they_ weren’t changing.

“It’s not falling apart,” he said with a shake of his head. He placed a hand on Rey’s hip, that still felt natural, as did the other cradling the back of her neck. “You’re here for real now. We don’t need the Bond as it was. It…” He swallowed hard. “It’s not weaker, it’s just different now. Like us.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed at him. “I can’t feel your turmoil anymore, Ben Solo, but I can still tell when you’re lying to yourself.”

She yanked herself out of his arms before he could even think of a single thing to say in his defense.

“I told you to leave the past behind,” Rey said between gritted teeth, “I _told_ you to kill it. But you made me come here!”

“The Resistance…”

“Do you think it was easy for me?” she snapped, her body once more tensed as if she were about to leap at him with her lightsaber aglow. “Killing it before? When Snoke found me on Jakku?” A shudder ran through her. “He could have killed them. But he didn’t. He bought me. He wanted me to know that he hadn’t come to rescue me. He’d come to _own_ me.”

“Rey…”

She stiffened.

“Rey of Jakku or Kira Ren, I owe no allegiance to you or your Resistance or to anyone else. I belong only to myself!”

Ben didn’t need a Force Bond to hear the unsaid _…and not to you_ before Rey stormed out of the cargo hold.

 

For all his outward displays of confidence and Jedi-like serenity, Ben kept waiting for the day he would wake up to learn that Rey had left.

He would have liked to say it was the workings of the Force that she didn’t but he knew better.

It was nothing but luck, that good old rebel luck, _Solo luck_ , that spared him from mourning her and all that could have been.

Poe’s wingmates arriving with help, the next base on Mom’s list a success, and all of a sudden their Resistance didn’t look quite such a hopeless endeavor anymore.

In their new spacious base they weren’t crammed together anymore. There was no need to share awkward silences.

There was a new chasm between them and no Force Bond to bridge it.

Ben felt Rey’s bright-dark presence that no longer felt in tune with his own. She hadn’t left. She hadn’t given up on them. It had to be enough.

 

A mere two weeks later, Ben walked through monochrome corridors, occasionally getting out of the way of Resistance members rushing by with wounded comrades.

The First Order listening outpost was theirs, their first successful strike against the First Order, but at what price?

He could read the same doubt in the accusing looks of his fellow Resistance members, he could read it between the lines of their angry whispers. They doubted, and they knew exactly who was to blame for their doubts and their losses.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered now was finding Rey.

Ben held on to this thought until he found her pacing in a room which was more a compilation of debris than the storage room it had once been. Parts of the ceiling had come down and crushed rows of shelves beneath its weight, it was illuminated only by a single fizzling light.

Its only perk was that it was well out of the way.

Rey looked tied up in tightly-controlled fury, her presence in the Force felt more Dark than Light and far Darker than it ever had since she killed Snoke. He should have stepped lightly, Ben knew, yet his own turmoil boiled within him, all these angry voices still echoed loud in his ears and mingled with his own, equally angry thoughts.

Turmoil or not, it was still Rey who broke the silence first, snapping, “it didn’t work!” She stalked towards him, her hand on the hilt of her lightsaber. “Your stupid little plan didn’t work!”

He squared his shoulders and his own growl of annoyance answered hers. “You didn’t call for us! I was waiting, we were _all_ waiting, but you never gave us the signal!”

Rey bared her teeth at him. “I was too busy trying not to get killed!”

“ _Your_ job was to signal the Falcon!”

“And you’re here now, you got your kriffing signal!”

“Not through anything you did!”

They stood there, face to face once more, both breathing heavily and shaking with indignant fury.

Rey lowered her gaze first. “I couldn’t,” she choked out. Her hand dropped from her lightsaber to hang limply at her side. “I tried to call you through our bond, but it didn’t work.” She swallowed hard. “I was never taught to use the Force for communication, not over such distances.” A moment of pause. “It was always Snoke who contacted me.” Another pause, another struggle. “And…”

She didn’t need to say it.

It had been Snoke who had brought them together to lure Ben Solo to his side and thus, finally gain his own Vader. They had only believed they were freeing themselves, while in truth they had been acting to someone else’s script.

They had never spoken of that.

Ben looked away first.

Silence fell, a leaden weight which Ben couldn’t shake off and apparently, neither could Rey.

Rey went back to pacing, Ben stood there and tried to find some guidance in the Force. Try as he might, it didn’t have any answers for him.

“Is this all we are without Snoke?” he asked quietly.

Rey shot him a glare. “He told us as much.”

“And now you’re back to listening to him?” Sharpness was returning to his own voice. It wasn’t very Jedi-like, he knew that, but he had never been all that good a Jedi.

“Maybe he was right.” She stopped her pacing and faced him properly. “Let’s face it. Maybe he was the only thing binding us together.”

It felt like a slap. Ben gritted his teeth against the anger bubbling up in him, all these hurtful knee-jerk responses that were already at the tip of his tongue. He had gotten the sharp tongue from both sides of the family, after all. “You don’t believe that.”

Rey’s chin gained that stubborn jut he liked so much, under better circumstances. “But what if it’s true?”

“Do you think it is?” He cursed under his breath as he stepped towards her. “You found me on Ahch-to. You haunted me. I’m not going to let you tell me that nothing we saw and… did there was real.”

Felt. Nothing they felt. What he’d known her to feel, what he had felt. The other bond that had grown between them, one that had nothing to do with facilitated long-distance Force communication and everything with them and the confidences they had shared.

Rey showed him her teeth again. “But it’s gone!” She was breathing heavily. “The Force Bond is gone! It was never real, it’s just something he used to play us!”

“Yes! And we turned it against him! We defeated him!”

“You know I have never been anything but a tool to more powerful people, don’t you?” Rey’s eyes met his for a moment before she pointedly averted her eyes. “I don’t know how to be what they need.”

They stood there, at an impasse.

“I gave my life into your hands when you still obeyed Snoke.” She had tensed further, she was still refusing to look at him. Ben couldn’t blame her, if he could hide he would, too, but one of them had to try. Rey had taken all the first steps on Ahch-to. It had to be his turn now. “Chewbacca told me I was insane for believing in you. I… What I’m trying to say is, I’m not going to give up on you because you’ve never been taught how to be a rebel.”

Rey looked up again. For the first time in a good long while, Ben could read a hint of humor in her gaze. “And you’re sure that you know how to be a rebel, Ben Solo?”

He could feel himself flush despite his best efforts not to. On the bright side, he was only half as mortified as when she’d popped in while he was shirtless. “Not really. But I know I’m not going to let Snoke win.”

They approached another, step by step, until they were standing face-to-face again.

In a recreation of that night in the cave on Ahch-to, Rey held out her hand. It was trembling.

Unlike that night, he didn’t hesitate to reach for it.

Come with me, he had pleaded with Rey after they had defeated Snoke and his Praetorian Guard.

They did not speak, but to Ben, it felt like she was finally saying yes.


End file.
